Yes, Wirecard does that. You can buy a card for EUR 10 or something like that at a gas station or at Lidl, and then you can top it up with cash right there at the cashier.
This is not my experience. I use the Revolut cards on a daily basis in UK and Germany. The situations where offline authorization would be necessary are really rare for me. On trains, planes, at unmanned gas stations, some occasional vending machine on vacation. It happens like 3 times a year or so.
Donāt get me wrong, I am all for cards with offline functionality, but at least in my experience the majority of businesses does accept Revolut cards just fine.
Same here in France, I am using Revolut card on a daily basis and no real issue so far
actually, they are quiet common in germany, switzerland and austria (not sure about italy and france)ā¦
mostly, they are used for getting teenagers a possibility to pay with visa or mastercard. also, they are nice ā2nd cardsā, especially when buying them in foreign currencys (eg. switzerland -> a prepaid for EUR)ā¦
BUT - fees to get one (at least in CH) are very high, so itās just easier to get a real credit-cardā¦
Thatās not been my experience. Sure for day to day use in the UK there is little or no difference. But have regularly been declined online where a full Debit card like Curve has been accepted. (Eg Uber is a case in point).
Also Iāve been travelling for the past 3 weeks in Asia and Australia. My Revolut Card has been declined a couple of times already so far, with my Curve Card (with Revolut as the underlying funding card) being accepted.
And itās common outside Europe for merchants to apply differing surcharge percentages to debit cards and credit cards. And Revolut so far has Not been showing up as a Debit card on POS terminals. Which is irritating. Not so the full Debit card from Curve. Making it at times cheaper to use than Revolut.
So yes. Iād like the opportunity to have a full Debit card from Revolut.
TransferWise: Lean app, but basically no statistical tools.
Revolut: Cool statistical tools and a lot of customization possibilities in the app.
TransferWise 6 - Revolut 3
TransferWise: No top-up limits, but very generous card limits of up to 10ā000 GBP per month.
Revolut: Low initial top-up limits, onerous process to get them raised. Risk of blocked accounts.
TransferWise 7 - Revolut 3
TransferWise: Website with extended account functionality and backup access in case of app problems.
Revolut: No account functionalities on website. No backup in case of app or phone problems.
TransferWise 8 - Revolut 3
Shame that TransferWise doesnāt have a community where you can post your results.
To me itās all down to personal preference. My experience with :r: does not equate to yours so scores would be more 50:50.
Both services have plus and minus and as long as they meet my needs Iām happy.
Exactly what @Powie said. You should choose your service depending on what you need. For me Revolut works perfectly, I travel from time to time but I rarely use any other currency besides EUR. I joined :r: mostly because of the app and all its features and to support a really innovative fintech. I do understand however, if someone in the UK who doesnāt travel that much prefers Monzo or Starling. To be honest I would love to try out Starling and maybe even Monese. TransferWise or N26 never really interested me.
Interesting. Was it at a small merchant or a large one?
Did you get any clarification from the support team?
I had no issues in South Korea and paid with the card wherever it was acceptedā¦
Iām not a power user of any of my bank accounts/apps and I travel a lot but most countries I go to use EUR. TransferWise never really caught my attention because I donāt like their app. I think Revolut is ahead of all the other ones when it comes to having a simple yet intuitive app that allows me to organize my budget and spending.
I mentioned Monese because they have phone support, something that Revolut should definitely consider. The waiting times are really scary right now.
Iāll be giving Starling a try when they launch in my country, they are about to launch in Ireland and they plan on expanding to rest of Europe after.
I would only bother with non-essential inquiries
Just write support everything relevant at once and if something isnāt essential, itās totally fine if they respond with something days later.
For me, I recently moved from the UK to mainland EU for work and a friend who had done the same suggested Revolut to help manage money between two countries and two banks.
It looked great, the app was good and at least when i got into it, support was quick, detailed and straight to the point.
I do a lot of exchanging currencies from EU/SEK/GBP and using my traditional bank, they wanted to charge me a flat fee to transfer any foreign currency to or from them, no matter how much. Having Revolut basically not charge me a dime (if done during the week) is the ultimate best option for me.
I looked at the other ādigitalā banks after I had already invested into Revolut and noticed that they either specialised in UK services or UK people going on holiday abroad, or they charged me for transfers. So no reason to swap from Revolut.
Iāve personally never had any issues with the service, Iām not a power spender, I donāt get my salary sent to Revolut, I donāt transfer enough money to buy a house through Revolut either. I wouldnāt trust the service with that amount personally but thatās not a dig at Revolut, I wouldnāt do that with anything other than a traditional bank and even then Iād grimace at the cost theyād charge me to do so. Only because they have insurance, I donāt have a lot of āfree moneyā I can afford to lose and in my mind, itās a hell of a lot easier to chase them legally than a digital tech start up company.
I know and understand we need these big power users of Revolut that do all the above to help grow and prove the system and Iām so grateful for them, but in my life/situation, I can not afford to risk having complications with any amount of money, so I donāt and neither should anyone here that complains about Revolut āruining their lifeā when issues arise. Always have a back up, always use funds you can afford to be delayed, until everything is perfect, sorted and smooth which it isnāt for any of the services today, even traditional banks have their bad days.
Revolut wonāt steal your money, they wonāt scam you, but sometimes they may require some more time to jump through hoops or to explain things, or even more info from you to clarify things. Let them and help them if you truly want to support them and see this industry change for the better it wonāt always feel like an uphill struggle.
- Just my two cents, Iām not anti any other services, I just support the ones that work for me
Good that youāre having a good experience, but Iāve been both stolen from and scammed by revolut. I had money being charged from my account, and the charge showing as being from online merchants when in fact was from revolut by mistake they say. Then I had also a situation with a ghost physical card that after all never even existed. No wonder I didnāt receive itā¦
Probably more incompetence than malice, but you better be vigilant. These kinds of issues really need to stop happening
At a risk of this being slightly off topic;
Iām sorry to hear that, were these issues resolved? I hope so, Were they explained and communicated properly? Was this early on in Revolutās service or recently? Do you continue to use Revolut after this? If so, why?
All services may and probably do have issues similar to this, even traditional banks do, but we have a forum to voice the issues and concerns here making it more visible so it appears more unreliable or more common than traditional bank issues.
I really hope your issues were sorted out and apologised for where necessary, I wouldnāt like it either if what you described happened to me.
The money that was taken was fortunately refunded, but not without first revolut insisting I talked to the merchant who supposedly had made the charge and of course didnāt know anything about it. I also had to wait about 5 days from first identifying the problem and contacting revolut until I was refunded.
As for the card I never got any refund for the express delivery or explanation for what happened with them sending the card to the wrong address, however Iām willing to let it slide as it is an infinitely lower amount than the issue above
These issues both occurred last month, and I do still use Revolut as Iāve already invested a bit of money in cards and premium plan and I believe the issues donāt occur due to malice but rather incompetence, though Iāll bail if stuff like this happens again
Hey guys,
Iāve read somewhere that TW offers full debit card unlike Revolut, Iām owner of both cards but couldnāt see any difference between these 2 cards, I tryed to find an answer on this forum or internet but nothing clear to meā¦ Please could someone explain me what it really means?
Thank you in advance
Regards
Usually a prepaid card like revolutās is not accepted to warranty things, like when renting a car or pumping petrol.
Besides some legal differences about how they are related to bank accounts, the main practical difference is that Debit cards have a different service code configuration to allow offline verification. They cary a separate offline limit, often something around 100 bucks, that is basically a credit. When there is no online connection, a payment is ādrawnā from that credit and then settled the next time the card goes online.
Technically, a card with the same āDebitā style service code configuration but an offline limit of ā0ā is possible. This card would behave like a prepaid online only card, but would have higher acceptance in cases where merchants decline prepaid cards out of principle. There is no real reason why a car rental should not accept a prepaid card when it carries sufficient funds to block a security deposit.
Hey @Frank,
Thanks for great explanation. So do we know if Revolut put this limit to ā0ā (like TW in fact, because itās also not possible to take fuel at āofflineā pump for ex.) or if itās definitely not a real Debit card?
But anyway, the answer is not that important finallyā¦Fingers crossed for some change about this restriction one dayā¦
Thx
Unfortunately, no. I havenāt seen a post anywhere about the UCOL/LCOL configuration.
http://emv.maxontour.com/2018/07/01/transferwise-debit-mastercard-2018/
Also: when I checked my TW card a while ago, BIN databases reported āissued in Spainā. That changed to āUnited Kingdomā now. Makes more sense.